MacFormat的May 2021目录

iCloud is such a core part of the Apple experience that the Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV just don’t seem the same without it – from syncing files and personal data across your devices to iCloud Photos and more, it just works. Well, most of the time at any rate. iCloud does so much in fact that it can be easy to be both blasé and slightly discombobulated by it, which is why this month’s lead feature delves into iCloud’s nooks and crannies, and explains the big stuff and the small so you can make the most of it – find out more on p18. While iCloud gives you a safe space for your stuff, the same can’t be said about the veracity of the internet, which…

WE ASKED… What’s your ideal iPhone screen size? Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat Apple invests 1bn in Germany Apple has announced it will invest over €1bn into new and existing sites in Germany. This will lead to the creation of a new facility that will work on “5G and future wireless technologies”, as well as pouring additional funds into research and development at Apple’s current German locations. This could allow Apple to reduce its reliance on third-party chip designers. For example, Apple currently uses Qualcomm modems in the iPhone but is known to be looking to take this in-house. The creation of Apple’s new European Silicon Design Center may help here. The facility may also be involved in creating 6G chips for future use.…

Future MacBooks could come with much more extensive haptic feedback, according to a recent Apple patent. Instead of being limited to the trackpad, your laptop could have numerous haptic zones that could be used for different purposes. Right now, all Apple MacBooks come with Force Touch trackpads. These use a small motor to simulate the feel of a click when the trackpad is not actually moving at all. Apple’s patent outlines much more extensive usage of haptics. One idea depicts haptic zones on the left, middle, and right of a laptop. These might be used when you get a notification, giving you a subtle nudge to let you know a new message has been received. One area where this would be very welcome is the Touch Bar, as Apple’s touch-sensitive…

Many of us might still be getting settled with our iPhone 12 handsets, but that doesn’t stop speculation about what might come next. Talk about the next generation of Apple smartphone is rife. (Isn’t it always…) There’s all sorts of issues to ponder – what sizes will the new range feature? Will it have Touch ID, Face ID, or both? And what connections and ports will the device come equipped with? Some trends from Apple and beyond provide a hint. Further evolution Given the fairly dramatic overhaul that was the iPhone 12, it’s likely that its successor will be more about evolution than revolution, reinforcing the gains from the introduction of 5G, a LiDAR scanner potentially going across the range, and ever improving camera technology. It seems unlikely that there…

iCloud Photos (formerly iCloud Photo Library) automatically copies any photos or videos you take on your devices and stores them in iCloud. You can then access them on your other Apple devices or share them with others. It supports the most common photo and video formats including Apple’s favoured HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec) formats and the standard JPEG, RAW, PNG, TIFF, MP4 and GIFs used by most image apps. It integrates seamlessly with your Photos app (and the data it syncs includes your People album, which is the one that uses image recognition to recognise people in your photos), and you can also access your library from any web browser via iCloud.com. One of the things we really like about iCloud Photos is…

Sometimes we delete important things by accident. Thankfully iCloud can help us recover them. If you log in to iCloud.com and click on iCloud Drive, you’ll see a little icon at the bottom right of the window saying Recently Deleted. Click on that to open the Recently Deleted folder, which keeps deleted files and folders for up to 30 days: you’ll see a label under each file or folder name telling you how long it has left before it’s gone forever. To bring files back from the brink, just select them and then click on Recover. You can also restore other things from within iCloud.com: if you click on your name in the top right and then on Account Settings, you’ll see links to restore contacts, calendars and bookmarks too.…

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Luminar AI’s templates provide a quick way to creatively grade your images to produce a range of attractive looks. However, by using a template, you do run the risk of making your shots look very similar to one another and somewhat ‘standardised’. Your photos may also suffer from problems with under or over exposure, colour casts and lens-induced distortion. Fortunately, Luminar AI boasts a digital darkroom – the Edit module – that is packed full of tools that can overcome common picture problems. While the latest iPhones use Smart HDR to combine multiple exposures into a single well-exposed shot, if you shoot on DSLR cameras you may find it more challenging to capture detail in contrasting shadows and highlights. Luminar can selectively adjust contrasting tones to reveal missing details. And…

If you’ve been taking photos for many years you’re likely to have thousands of images scattered across a range of locations, from your Mac’s Pictures folder to a motley collection of removable hard drives. This can make it a tedious challenge to find specific files, especially if you can’t remember when a particular shot was captured or which drive it’s stored on. Fortunately, you can use a Digital Asset Management app such as Photo Studio for Mac 7 to round up and organise thousands of stray shots. In part one of our look at the app, we’ll demonstrate how to use key asset management tools such as ratings, colour labels and keywords. You can also place images in easy-to-browse custom categories (such as cats, dogs, portraits, etc). You can then…

iPads and iPhones don’t have expandable storage – but you can use external USB sticks and memory cards to transfer files or store things you don’t need to keep on your device. Things are easier if you own an iPad Air or iPad Pro equipped with USB-C, since you can connect USB-C sticks directly. However, often you’ll need an adapter, especially when using a memory card, or an iPad or iPhone equipped with Lightning. In that case, to connect USB sticks, you’ll need the Lightning to USB Camera Adapter or the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter; to connect memory cards, the Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader or the USB-C to SD Card Camera Reader. While USB sticks don’t use as much power as external hard drives, they still…

Sharing the family Photos album Q I’m about to start scanning thousands of old family photos, and want to put them in a Photos library to share over our home network. Will that work? by PHIL THOMPSON A This is an excellent time to get this done, given the diminishing supply of and support for scanners. There are good tools for enhancing and retouching scanned images, but sharing them over a network is more of a problem. So long as you’re working with thousands not hundreds of thousands of images, Photos is a natural first choice, but it isn’t designed to work with networked libraries. The other alternative, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, is even more stringent, and doesn’t work with networked libraries at all, only local ones. The next step up…

While Macs are less prone to viruses than PCs, they’re not immune. If you’re serious about security, paying for security software gives you lots of extra protection. There’s plenty of choice too – here’s five of the very best to choose from. Norton 360 > £64.99 > FROM uk.norton.com Norton is one of the best-known – and longest-established – names in security, and Norton 360 both excels in basic protection (perfect AVTest scores) and in offering a raft of tools to boost your privacy online and off. Bitdefender Antivirus > £39.99/year > FROM bitdefender.co.uk Bitdefender’s protection is so good, you’ll often find other tools use its anti-virus engine. It consistently scores perfectly in the AVTest labs, doesn’t slow down your Mac and is superb value. Avira Antivirus Pro > £35.88…

£269 FROM Airthings, airthings.com FEATURES Smart home air quality monitoring, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT integration The kit offers Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT support, but doesn’t play nicely with HomeKit Oh, what an atmosphere, Russ Abbot once sang, although he probably wasn’t thinking about Radon, mould and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) when he wrote it. Heck, ‘party’ and ‘VOC’ even rhyme. What a chorus that would have been. Luckily, you can ensure a happy atmosphere at home with the Airthings House Kit – a one-box air monitoring solution that comprises an Airthings Wave Mini (available separately for £69), a Wave (£169), and a Hub (£69) for £269. We last looked at the Airthings Wave Mini in MF343, but this kit takes things further by offering way more functionality,…

ON TEST… BenQ EW3280U HP E27d G4 Lenovo Q27h-10 ViewSonic VP3881 Remember the controversy when Apple rolled out the skinny 12-inch MacBook in 2015 with its single USB-C port? Now all of Apple’s MacBooks are pure USB-C devices. Hence our round up of some of the best monitors with USB-C connections. Until recently, full USB-C connectivity with charging made for a pricey panel. But the cheapest screen here is yours for £299.99, and it sports QHD (2560x 1440 pixels) native resolution and a quality IPS panel. Not bad for the money. And speaking of resolution, combining 4K with USB-C connectivity has also come down in price. In the context of desktop monitors, a true high-density Retina experience of 200ppi or more remains elusive outside of Apple’s own megabucks Pro Display…

£19.99 FROM Apptorium, apptorium.com NEEDS macOS 10.14 or later Workspaces provides a dashboard for individual workspaces. These can then be populated by multiple resources – apps, files, folders, websites and so on – in the form of shortcuts. Resources can be launched manually or configured to open automatically when you open the workspace. Adding most items is as simple as dragging them across then configuring options (say, choosing a specific application to launch individual files). Two additional resources are Terminal (open a Terminal window to your choice of folder), and URL. This latter option allows you to plug in other compatible apps using standard protocols, such as ‘mailto:’ (for email) and ‘tel:’ (for FaceTime calls). Version 2.0 adds support for Actions via plug-ins, which need to be installed separately. Four…

£89.99 (£139.99 Pro) FROM Corel Corporation, roxio.com NEEDS macOS 10.14 or later Toast is a digital management suite and DVD burner for Mac. Version 19 debuts an interface refresh which offers a more intuitive workflow. The Home window can be customised with up to eight favourite one-click tasks. This is handy if you’re new to the app, but will also appeal if you who want to jump to core functionality like burning disc images or specific optical media formats. There are seven main buttons: Home, Burn, Copy, Convert, Capture, Edit, and Secure. Select one of these to see a list of features; clicking the rotated pin icon to the left of a task adds it to the quick-access panel. Toast remains dedicated to traditional Burn, Copy, and Convert modes though.…

Free (IAPs) FROM Momenta BV, agenda.com NEEDS iOS 11 or later Agenda also gives you the ability to link to things from your notes This app combines notes, calendars, and reminders. Agenda notes can contain pretty much anything, and you can organise notes by category, project, dates or tags. There are two versions of Agenda: a free version that you can use forever and the Premium iteration, which for a one-off £33.99 unlocks features such as project archiving, creating smart overviews from search criteria, copying text as Markdown/HTML, and editing Calendar events. The free version is good but Premium, which also covers your Mac, is better. Agenda uses a three-panel layout. The left sidebar contains On The Agenda – a bird’s-eye view of your most important notes – as well…

With Apple focusing on augmented reality (AR), you might not be aware of how many great virtual reality (VR) apps are available. Unlike AR, which overlays digital content onto the real world, VR takes you to a new place entirely, shut off from the world in a fully immersive virtual realm. You don’t need a hugely powerful Mac to enjoy it — just a relatively modern iOS device and a headset. While many headsets can be expensive, they don’t have to be: Google Cardboard, for example, lets you build your own. Now is the ideal time to give VR a try — if it sounds like your thing, we have the perfect apps for you here. YouTube VR Free (IAPs) NEEDS iOS 11 or later The world’s most famous video…

This year is shaping up to be a big one in terms of Apple products, with plenty of important redesigns and new devices said to launch in 2021. Going into production this April are updated 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, which according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, will feature A14X chips, boasting performance on a par with Apple’s M1 Macs – the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini. The new iPad Pros are also expected to come with Thunderbolt ports for the first time, replacing the current model’s USB-C ports. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, adding Thunderbolt would enable the new iPad Pro models to be connected to a wider range of peripherals including external monitors and drives, while also bringing faster syncing speeds. The 2021 iPad Pros are…

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2020 finally brought the venerable graphic design package to the Mac. Now the 2021 version works on M1 Macs too, delivering twice the performance of its predecessor. The suite comprises six different tools – CorelDRAW, CorelDRAW.app, CorelDRAW.app for iPad, Corel Photo-Paint, Corel Font Manager and AfterShot 3 HDR – hence the hefty price tag. You don’t just get that creative horsepower, there are dozens of new features too, including a collaboration hub that enables you to work with others, plus Microsoft Teams integration. There’s also a new Multi-Page View, and Perspective Drawing tools to help improve your workflow. If an entire suite is too rich for your tastes or budget, CorelDRAW Essentials 2021 is worth a look – it has most of the fun, creative tools of…

When you share photos in Mail, you can adjust the image size from Small to Actual Size. That last one is rarely a good idea: iPhone photos can be very big even when they’re in HEIF format. But what happens when you need to send photos, videos or any other files that are just too big to email? That’s where Mail Drop comes in. In Mail, go to Preferences > Accounts > Account Information (or, if you’re on iCloud.com, choose Settings > Preferences Composing), tick ‘Send large attachments with Mail Drop’. This creates a download link instead, and your files are available to download from iCloud for 30 days.…

The Find My app combines two location apps in one: Find My Phone and Find My Friends. It enables you to track the location of all kinds of Apple devices: not just Macs, iPhones and iPads but AirPods and Apple Watches too. You can access it from the Mac or iOS app, or via iCloud.com on the web. Find My is designed to do two things. It can let you know where devices are, whether that’s an iPod touch that’s fallen down the back of the sofa or the iPhone of a family member who can’t remember where they last had it. And the second is to take action if a device has fallen into the wrong hands. The location-based part of Find My works really well. It can identify…

You can also share Apple services and your iCloud package with family members. Family Sharing enables you to share all kinds of things with up to five other Apple IDs so that you can share photos, storage and apps. If you’re thinking ‘hang on, aren’t Apple IDs unavailable to under-13s?’, you’re right, but Apple enables you to create Apple IDs on their behalf. You can choose to share iCloud storage, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, location data, iTunes and App Store purchases and Apple Books. Family Sharing also enables you to set up Screen Time and parental controls. Depending on third-party apps you have, you may find them here too. For example, a Tweetbot app subscription can be shared with family members. You can only share services that you…

When Apple’s iLife creative suite made its debut in 2001, one of its key attractions was the ability to edit home movies in iMovie. You could then burn them to newfangled optical discs using iDVD – perfect for reliving happy family occasions and holidays on a DVD player. It seemed like the future. 20 years later and you’re more likely to share your iPhone movie footage on YouTube than on a spinning piece of plastic, but macOS Big Sur still gives you the ability to create DVDs albeit without the animated menus and seamless workflow that iDVD (which Apple retired in 2011) once did. Or the ability to play the discs back in DVD players come to that. For that level of sophistication, you’ll need something like Roxio Toast 19…

Many of us are finding things really hard right now, and sadly the thing that’s making things so difficult for so many – COVID-19 – is also making it hard for people to access the support that could help them. What if technology could step in? That’s the promise of mental health apps such as Woebot (free), which is being described as “the future of mental health”. It’s a “therapeutic relational agent” – in other words, a chatbot for therapy. The idea behind the app is that you check in every day and talk to it just like you’d talk to a human therapist; through a combination of AI and natural language processing it can understand and adapt to your emotional and cognitive state, helping you discover ways to feel…

A good night’s sleep is important for our overall well-being, yet too many of us stay up late at night scrolling on our iPhones. Ironically, though, your iOS device can actually help you get to sleep thanks to a handy feature in the Health app. That feature is Sleep Mode, which lets you define a bedtime schedule for the days and weeks ahead. When this schedule is active, your iPhone’s Lock Screen is dimmed, Do Not Disturb is enabled, and you are encouraged to start relaxing for bed. Part of that process is Wind Down, which begins before your stated bedtime. If you have enabled this feature, Do Not Disturb mode starts the moment Wind Down is active instead of waiting for your bedtime. You can also set Shortcuts for…

The vast bulk of your time online is spent in your web browser, and whether you’ve stuck with Safari or opted for one of the many alternatives, there’s plenty you can do to tighten security. Start by performing an audit of all those extensions (also known as add-ons) you’ve installed – in Safari, you’ll find them under the Extensions tab after selecting Safari > Preferences. Uninstall any you don’t recognise or don’t need, plus enable any that have been installed by your security software, which can offer additional protection (for example, Bitdefender’s TrafficLight extension will scan pages when loaded for potentially harmful content). Before proceeding, find and install your password manager’s browser extension to speed up logging into websites (and generating new, strong passwords when you set up new accounts…

LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! Take a close look at my little patch of doorstep nature, and you’ll find a few smart touches. My shed, such as it is, is held shut by an Igloohome Smart Padlock, genuinely one of the most impressive and well presented pieces of smart kit I think I’ve ever seen. In addition, there are cameras pointing at the garden, which is admittedly just a little pointless given that there’s no rear or side access to my humble terraced abode; the cameras are there mostly just to fill my iCloud storage with footage of my cats looking shifty. It’s all a work in progress, though. There are some serious upgrades coming, and this is absolutely the year to…

£164.95 FROM Moshi, moshi.com FEATURES USB-C with power delivery (up to 60W), 1x 4K/60Hz HDMI port, 2x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports (1 with fast charging), 1x Gigabit Ethernet port, Qi wireless charging (up to 15W); 11.6x7.2x3.2cm The Symbus Q is incredibly clever and convenient to use While rumours abound that Apple’s 2021 MacBooks will feature a more comprehensive array of ports (including HDMI and an SD card slot), the current crop offers very limited connectivity indeed. On the Apple silicon-powered MacBook Air and 13in M1 MacBook Pro, you get just two Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, while on the Intel-powered 13in and 16in MacBook Pros you get two more… and that’s it. You won’t find the aforementioned HDMI or SD card slots, USB-A, Ethernet or other legacy connections, which means you’ll either…

Being all things to all users is a tough task, but the BenQ EW3280U gets awfully close. It starts with a quality IPS panel and generous 4K resolution, ensuring excellent colour accuracy and plenty of precision and detail. To that solid foundation, it adds the slick simplicity of USB-C connectivity with up to 65W of charging power for your MacBook or laptop. It’s further improved courtesy of an integrated soundbar that offers an audio upgrade over most monitors, plus extras like an IR (infrared) remote. It’s all wrapped in a high-quality chassis with slim bezels on three sides and slick styling. The fact that you can have all this for the relatively reasonable price of £579 only sweetens the deal. Strictly speaking, the monitor lacks some cuttingedge features such as…

€45 (about £40) FROM Objective Development, obdev.at NEEDS macOS 11 or later Little Snitch has long been the go- to tool to watch for malware attacks and leaks. Big Sur presents a challenge though: some of Apple’s software like Maps now bypasses controls, and the app can no longer rely on a kernel extension. Version 5 uses a new System Extension, making it more compatible. Little Snitch runs in two modes: First-timers should go for the default Silent Mode allowing connections, and use its built-in rule groups for macOS and iCloud services. With more experience, switch to Alert Mode to approve any unexpected connections. Silent Mode denying connections is best once you’re confident its filters are right. Access to those modes and other controls is from the menu bar, where…

From 99 (about £85) FROM IK Multimedia, ikmultimedia.com NEEDS macOS 10.10 or later Amplitube 5 is a wonderful mix of high tech and retro style The company behind Amplitube 5, IK Multimedia, was modelling guitar amps and pedals when most of today’s modellers were still in short trousers, and the latest version of its veteran virtualiser is extraordinary. Amplitube 5 enables you to combine all kinds of amps, speaker cabinets and effects to deliver incredibly realistic tones. You can use it as a standalone app or from inside a digital audio workstation (DAW) such as Logic Pro. It’s ridiculously entertaining to mess around with: how many apps enable you to see what it’d sound like if Jimi Hendrix’s pedals were connected to Brian May’s amps? The presets are convincing and…

From £1.99/month FROM Moleskine, moleskinestudio.com NEEDS iOS 13 or later Flow is an artist’s sketchpad with customisable brush presets and gestures, and an endless canvas for images of any width. The second major version brings a lower price tag: if you buy the Studio Bundle for £19.99, you get Flow plus the Timepage calendar app and Actions to-do app. The app is £11.49 per year on its own. Flow’s endless canvas can now flow vertically instead of horizontally, and the new Pencil Case mode takes the tools away from your iPad screen and displays them on your iPhone instead. You can add images to a document from Photos or Files, including supported cloud storage services, and you can take photos from inside the app and draw on them. You can…

iMac From £1,049 Ever since the famous Bondi Blue iMac debuted in August 1998, Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer has been setting standards in gorgeous design and powerful performance. Apple’s innovation was as clear back then as it is today – the iMac was the first Macintosh to drop the floppy drive in favour of USB, and its colourful aesthetic set it apart as a playful option in a world of beige boxes. The current entry-level 21.5in was finally updated in August 2020, although its specs remain largely unchanged from March 2019. What changes there are, are confined to your storage options – Apple has finally dropped the 5,400rpm hard drive in favour of SSDs across the board. Fusion Drives are now only available as Build To Order options. The biggest…

Over the years, the Mac mini has undergone something of a quiet evolution. Launched in January 2005 at the Macworld Conference and Expo with a PowerPC G4 processor, two models – a 1.25GHz or 1.42GHz version – were originally available, both with ATI Radeon 9200 graphics and 32MB of dedicated DDR memory. At the time, Steve Jobs declared the new Mac mini as “an incredibly compact Mac for a price that almost anyone can afford,” and that original pitch remains, opening up the Apple ecosystem to users who may have otherwise been priced out of it. While it can sometimes feel a bit forgotten, the gap between significant updates too wide, the Mac mini’s history nicely outlines the development of Mac processors. Just over a year after the original G4…

The cameras on Apple’s latest iPhones are seriously impressive, but future versions could come with something even better: a “periscopic telephoto lens”. The clue comes from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has an excellent track record when it comes to predicting the company’s future plans. Kuo believes the periscopic lens could come with iPhones launching in 2023. Although he previously believed it would make an appearance in 2022, this date has apparently now been pushed back, potentially due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Huawei has included a periscopic zoom lens on its P30 Pro phone, which allows for up to 5x optical zoom in. In comparison, the iPhone 12 Pro Max – with Apple’s most advanced iPhone camera setup – offers 2.5x optical zoom in. Kuo also said…

Want to get your hands on an iMac Pro? You will need to hurry, as Apple has discontinued it, with the machine only on sale “while stocks last”. We should point out that this does not appear to be a case of Apple selling existing stock before launching a revamped iMac Pro, as the company has also confirmed to multiple outlets that it will stop manufacturing the computer once stock runs out. It is a precipitous fall for a device once touted by Apple as “the fastest, most powerful Mac ever made”. One problem lay in its design, which prohibited the kind of upgradeability that creative professionals often desire – something that was addressed with the Mac Pro in 2019. Apple silicon chips likely also played a part. These days,…

Photos For many of us, Photos is the killer app of iCloud: by storing all our images and videos in the cloud it doesn’t matter what device we’re using when we want to look at or edit our photos and movies: they’re available on our Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs. It can make sure your photos don’t take up too much room on any device, and it also enables you to share your photos with friends and family. Two-factor authentication Your various iCloud services use the familiar Apple ID and password, but for even better security you can set up two-factor authentication. This adds an extra layer of security that makes it much harder for various villains to get into your iCloud account. Apple also enables you to set…

iCloud is what iDisk became when it grew up: Apple’s original cloud storage service was discontinued in 2011 and replaced by iCloud Drive in 2012. It’s evolved into something very clever and powerful. iCloud enables you to store files and data on Apple’s servers. There are very few limits to what you can store: provided it’s less than 50GB in size and you have sufficient iCloud space, you can upload pretty much anything – although Apple does advise against storing app folders, libraries or. tmp files. iCloud Drive enabled apps such as Pages and Numbers to use it to store documents, so you can use the Mac ones on iPhone or iPad and vice versa, and you can use it on Mac like you would a USB drive or other…

Because iCloud synchronises data between devices and Apple’s servers, it’s moving lots of personal documents and data, so it’s important to protect that data from being intercepted by the wrong people. In order to do that, Apple uses extensive encryption provided you have two-factor authentication enabled (see ‘Use 2FA to protect your iCloud privacy’). Encryption encodes your data in a format that is essentially impossible for others to intercept and decode, and Apple uses encryption on all your data transfers and almost all the data stored on its servers too. The only thing it doesn’t encrypt by default is your iCloud Mail, but if you want to encrypt that too you can enable S/MIME encryption in your mail apps. Not everything is stored on Apple’s own servers: some data may…

iTunes Match was launched in 2011 and compared your Mac’s music library with the songs in the iTunes Store. If it found a match you could then stream or download Apple’s version even if it was higher quality than your copy. If not, Apple would copy the song to the cloud. You could add up to 100,000 songs over and above the ones you’d bought from iTunes. Not bad for £21 a year. iTunes Match still exists as a stand-alone service, but it’s also bundled with every Apple Music subscription and called iCloud Music Library. Unlike your Photos library, the space it takes up doesn’t come out of your iCloud storage. Just be aware that the songs you download from Apple Music aren’t purchases: they will no longer work if…

When Apple first launched macOS Big Sur in 2020, it overhauled the way the Notification Centre works on your Mac. Previously, this was divided between the Today view, which housed your tasks and widgets, and Notifications, which is where app alerts went if you dismissed them from your desktop. With macOS Big Sur, Apple merged the two sections into one. This makes your notifications and widgets a lot more streamlined but may take some getting used to if you are accustomed to the two sections being separate. However, it also blends in a lot better to your Mac interface, both by improving the look of the whole Notification Centre and introducing things like notification stacks, which save space and declutter your desktop. Working out widgets Widgets have been in macOS…

Emails and messages are all very well, but sending your correspondence in the post is sometimes necessary, or simply just a bit nicer. If you’re sending annual greetings cards, a family round robin or a community newsletter to a few people though, that’s a lot of envelopes to sort. Nobody wants to have to sit down and write out dozens or even hundreds of postal addresses. Luckily, that’s where macOS’s Contacts app comes in. Use the Group or Smart Group function in the app and you’ll not only be able to keep all the relevant contacts grouped, but you’ll be able to use that group as a mailing list for the thing(s) you want to send. Even better, select all the names in a group and click File > Print…

Upgrading an iMac with a hard drive Q Would it be wise to upgrade my iMac 21.5-inch Late 2012 from macOS Sierra, which it runs sweetly, to Mojave or later? by JUNE O’KEEFFE A Your two greatest considerations are its internal storage, and which apps you use. If it has an internal hard drive, then mandatory conversion of that to APFS format would impair its performance significantly, and be disruptive. If your iMac has an SSD instead, then upgrading is likely to improve performance, as the new file system is designed for SSDs. Fusion Drives are somewhere between and depend on usage and the size of the SSD part of the drive. Check the versions of the apps you have installed. Mojave still runs older 32-bit apps, and Adobe CS6…

Let’s start with the most fundamental aspect of security: installing anti-virus software. Skip to page 67 for a rundown of five of the best all-in-one solutions; you’ll also find plenty of free options available, starting with the free version of Avira Antivirus (avira.com), which provides real-time protection against viruses. Avira’s free offering does leave some gaps, so install Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (malwarebytes.com), which can root out infections missed by other anti-virus tools. It’ll install as a fully functional 14-day trial with real-time protection before reverting to a free version that enables you to manually scan your system and remove any nasties you find. Be sure to set yourself a reminder to run a regular weekly scan. Protect online accounts Are you still using the same passwords to protect your online identity?…

One of the most insecure forms of communication on the internet is good old email. By default, all messages are sent in plain text, which makes intercepting them a breeze. It means sharing sensitive data via email is a no-no unless you – and your email correspondent – are willing to take extra precautions by encrypting your email messages. The easiest way to do this is to both sign up for a dedicated email account with the likes of ProtonMail (protonmail.com), which provides encrypted email as standard between ProtonMail users. The step-by-step guide reveals the more complicated process required to generate an encryption certificate and key to scramble your emails using Mail – but it’s a one-time job, and can also be used to digitally sign your messages to prove…

Those of us lucky enough to have them have become intimately attached to our gardens in this past year. They’re a home away from home – and given that those same four walls get a little samey, a safe-space trip to the great outdoors is a real tonic. The garden is now more than a patch of grass out the back, it’s a viable room in its own right, with all the modern conveniences we’ve come to expect. It should come as no surprise that the burgeoning smart home is expanding outward into this new room at pace, ready to offer you smarter garden management, better connectivity and a whole host of new kit to tie into your existing routines; if you’re committed to your outdoor space, you can even…

£79.95 FROM Majority, majority.co.uk FEATURES 150W soundbar with external subwoofer, Bluetooth, 1x HDMI ARC port, 1x auxiliary input, 1x USB-A port, 1x digital optical output, 1x RCA (phono) output, FM radio, remote control Majority’s express aim is to deliver high-quality audio to the masses The Majority K2 is something of a web sensation, thanks to its price tag and performance – or so it would seem if you read the reviews online. But can it reach the giddy heights of its Himalayan namesake? Majority is a British company started by two men in their garage in Cambridge in 2012, with the express aim of delivering high-quality audio to the masses – it’s built an enviable reputation through its products, which range from DAB radios to microphones. It only sells online,…

£212.99 (240GB) to £584.99 (2TB), £365.99 (1TB) model tested FROM OWC, owcdigital.com FEATURES Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port, USB-A (USB 3.0 Gen 2) adaptor, dust- and waterproof to IP67 Life is tough – especially on tech that gets casually thrown into bags, dropped and occasionally dunked in puddles and caramel macchiatos. And that means you need a tough drive for your important files. Few come tougher than the OWC Pro Envoy FX. Finished in solid, charcoal grey aluminium with side-mounted cooling fins, a rear-mounted Thunderbolt 3 port and a blue read/right light on the front, it has a heft and solidity that belies its pack-of-cards sized dimensions. Dustand waterproof to IP67, it’s also rated to US military MIL-STD810G drop-test standards. It almost feels bombproof (but don’t try that at home, kids). The…

£299.99 (Multiroom Kit) FROM Devolo, devolo.co.uk FEATURES 802.11ac Wi-Fi on 2.4 or 5GHz bands, powerline connectivity, 2x2 MIMO; 3 adapters, 2m Ethernet cable The system can merge the bands into a single network, and switch to the closest adapter Devolo’s new Mesh WiFi 2 products combine powerline connectivity with far-reaching mesh Wi-Fi that can penetrate brick walls and cover your entire home. That versatility comes at a price though, and the three-adapter Multiroom Kit here costs £299.99. (There’s also a two-piece Starter Kit for smaller homes for £199.99.) The chunky adapters are designed to plug directly into a mains power socket so that their 2,400Mbps powerline connectivity can send data to other rooms over your mains electrical wiring. They also include a passthrough socket, so that you can use that…

£6.99 FROM Valerijs Boguckis, textsniper.app NEEDS macOS 10.15 or later TextSniper can quickly recognise and extract text from anything you can see on your Mac’s screen Scanning text so you can edit it, quote it or reuse it can be a pain, and the apps that do it can cost a lot of money. Not here. TextSniper can extract and recognise text from anything you can see on your Mac’s screen and it does it incredibly quickly. It’s cheap, too. Not all of the text we see on our displays can be copied. Celebrities’ insincere apologies screenshotted in Notes and shared on social media; text with graphics behind it; scanned or photographed documents such as legal decisions or old newspaper articles; app dialog boxes and options; recipes shown on video;…

Free (IAPs) FROM CleverFiles, cleverfiles.com NEEDS OS X 10.11.6 or later Disk Drill is a free utility to back up failing drives. It also scans volumes to preview and confirm which files can be recovered before upgrading (Pro version £77.99). Features like finding duplicate files and creating bootable drives or macOS installers are free. The latest release scans and performs limited recovery on late-model Macs, ie those with a T2 chip (2018 or later). With Guaranteed Recovery – which stores a hidden copy of deleted files – the software is capable of recovery from SSD with TRIM enabled. With support for FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, and APFS file systems, Disk Drill handles just about any volume, including iOS devices as well as Time Machine snapshots, so you can find deleted files…

£4.99/month (Apple Arcade) FROM Noodlecake, nuts.game NEEDS macOS 11 or later The gameplay basically consists of a series of repetitive runs Nuts begins with a simple premise: you are venturing into the forest on a research mission to document the area’s squirrels. You place cameras where you think you might see the furry critters, then return to your cabin to review the recordings. But as the game progresses, the story takes a dark turn. The first thing you will notice about the game is its standout colour palette. Each successive chapter sees the world daubed in different hues from the last, and no matter whether you are deep in the forest or stranded in a car reclamation yard, the stylish tint makes everything look pretty, especially on a large Mac…

Curated picks of third-party kit DESKTOP SPEAKER Ruark MR1 £329.99 ruarkaudio.com Winner of MF357’s head to head, the MR1 speaker set looks and sounds the business. The dome tweeter and long throw woofer can handle a variety of audio styles with aplomb. You get a good variety of connectivity options, and we love the chunky function/volume dial too. IN-EAR EARPHONES M&D MW07 Plus £279 masterdynamic.com Master & Dynamic’s MW07 Plus offer 10 hours of listening time, and the charging case holds an additional three charges (so you get 40 hours in total). These greatsounding earbuds are IPX5 rated, so they’re excellent for workouts and commuting. The marble-effect finish gives them a premium aesthetic, as does the stainless steel charging case. USB FLASH DRIVE SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Luxe 1TB £243.99…